


Next Stop: Anywhere

by HiddenTreasures



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s04e10 Midnight, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:58:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenTreasures/pseuds/HiddenTreasures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and Rose go travelling across the Earth they are now confined to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Next Stop: Anywhere

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the lovely badwolfrun on Tumblr in celebration of the anniversary of her Midnight Mondays.

When the Doctor and Rose arrived back in London, the first thing they did was leave. Rose packed a suitcase full of clothes and other necessities, and brought along an empty one for the clothes the Doctor would eventually accumulate. She called her mum and explained what they were doing before she booked them on the first zeppelin leaving Heathrow. The Doctor followed willingly, eager to spend alone time with Rose, no matter their destination.

As it turned out, their destination was everywhere. They explored the Earth that Rose had seen so little of, with the Doctor providing a running commentary on the places he knew the histories of, and exhausting his resources to learn about the places he’d never been to, or about the places that were unique to this universe.

For months they traveled, laughing and relaxing, and learning to be comfortable again in each other’s presence again. They shouldn’t have been surprised that they fell into their old relationship so quickly, with the new additions of being allowed to be more affectionate. The Doctor wasn’t hesitant to kiss her whenever he felt like it; Rose didn’t feel any sense of doubt or confusion when she curled up beside him every night. There was no awkwardness or fumbling when they made love the first time; it was like two pieces of a puzzle fitting together perfectly and beautifully.

They were taking to this new life together rather seamlessly.

Until they’d reached the Americas.

About two months into their global excursion, their zeppelin had ported in New York City. They decided to make a long weekend of it, and explore the surrounding areas.

“Oooh, doesn’t this look lovely!” Rose exclaimed over dinner that evening, showing him her mobile that advertised a bus trip down to Philadelphia.

The Doctor took one look at her phone, made a noncommittal noise, before saying, “Rose Tyler, have you ever seen a live Broadway performance?”

She ignored the non-sequitur and readily agreed to a performance on Broadway; she'd always enjoyed going to the theater.

The next day, she read off an itinerary of an over-night bus trip down to the nation’s capital.

“What do you say, Doctor?” she asked around her toothbrush. “We could try and visit all of the capital cities of the countries we visit?”

The Doctor, again, was less than enthused as he took a large bite of his toast.

“But Rose, there are so many things here in New York we haven’t seen yet!” he exclaimed through a mouthful of food. “There’s central park, and the Statue of Liberty, and all of the museums and shopping centers!”

Rose furrowed her eyes at him, but acquiesced. She wasn’t about to turn down a shopping trip when he offered it so freely. She tried not to think about the reasons for his refusal; perhaps none of the trips she’d suggested had appealed to him. He was, after all, used to more grandiose and exotic locations. All she had to offer him now was a present-day Earth full of normal, average, boring humans.

The day before they’d wanted to depart from the city, the Doctor shot down another of her suggestions to take a tour of Niagara Falls. She tried batting her eyelashes at him and pleaded for him to go with her (“Oh, c’mon, Doctor; it’s no fun if I see it on my own!”).

But he’d grown inexplicably irritated and snapped, “I just don’t want to take the bloody bus trip, Rose!”

Taking a moment to compose herself, she buried her hurt with anger.

Tossing her phone onto their hotel mattress, she huffed a sigh and said, “Bloody hell, Doctor, I’m trying my best here! I’m sorry I can’t offer you the accommodations or the adventures you’re used to, but I’m stuck here, too, you know, and I’m trying to make the best of it! I dunno why you’re being such an arsehole about this!”

The Doctor glared down angrily at her as he shouted, “Do you want me to go on the bloody trip? Fine, I’ll go on the bloody bus tour!”

“No, I don’t want you to go on the trip,” Rose seethed, raking her fingers through her hair in agitation. “I want you to  _want_  to come with me! You haven’t wanted to explore anything but the cities we’ve landed in. I would’ve thought you would’ve jumped at the chance to explore more of the world, seeing as it's all we've got now. I, for one, would like to see Niagara Falls; I haven’t explored much of this bloody universe, desperate as I was to get back home. So you stay here if you’d like; I’m going on that trip.”

Rose grabbed an overnight bag and began to pack a change of clothes. Her anger made her movements harsh and sloppy. The Doctor, meanwhile, sighed in exhaustion and defeat, and he sat down heavily on the bed beside Rose.

“Is that what you really think?” he asked softly, trying desperately to catch her gaze. “Do you really believe that I resent being stuck here? With you?”

Rose blinked away the angry tears that were threatening to fall.

“It’s obvious,” she muttered, not stopping her frenzied packing.

He tried to grab her hands, but she roughly drew them back.

“Rose, please,” he begged quietly. “Just look at me, please.”

She froze, and took a deep breath to compose her features before lifting her head to look at him. She was surprised by how upset he looked.

He reached out and gently cradled her cheek, brushing a few stray hairs from her face. The tender gesture made the tears she’d blinked away sting at her eyes again. The Doctor must’ve seen the moisture, because he stood and enveloped her into a tight hug.

He pressed his lips against her temple before murmuring, “I don’t resent this. How could I? You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, Rose Tyler, and it is the greatest of gifts to be able to live out this life with you. So don’t you ever think that I don’t want to be here. I do, very much, and I love you.”

The tears trickled down her cheeks, and she clung to him that much tighter.

“Then why haven’t you wanted to go exploring with me?” she whispered thickly.

He sighed and turned so they could both sit on the bed. He tucked Rose up against his side, and took her hands in his.

“I love traveling with you,” he murmured. “Just not on a bus. And not with other humans.”

“Doctor, I don’t understa–”

“Not too long ago, Donna and I landed on this planet called Midnight,” he said, speaking to their tightly-clasped hands. “It’s a beautiful planet made of diamonds. And while Donna elected to spend the day at the spa, I signed up for a bus tour to the local sapphire waterfalls. Well, the trip went a bit wrong.”

Rose glanced up at him, about to tease him that every adventure he went on always went wrong. But when she saw his tense jaw and closed eyes, she swallowed her comment. His eyebrows were tightly furrowed and there was the slightest tremor to his hands. She pressed a soft kiss against his collarbone and stroked his thumb soothingly.

“The bus was attacked,” he finally said in a voice that was barely audible. “I’m not sure by what, exactly, but this thing…this thing, it…it managed to get inside our heads. It took over this one passenger, Sky, first. It took her voice. It repeated everything we were saying, burying itself deeper and deeper into our minds without us knowing, turning us against each other. Well, turning everyone against me, I suppose. Then…”

His voice trailed off and his grip on her hand becoming painful.

“Then it got inside my head,” he whispered shakily “It just…paralyzed me. I couldn’t move, or speak. I couldn’t reason with the creature. I could only repeat what it was saying through Sky. I had lost all control; my mind was completely overtaken.”

Rose’s heart broke for him. He’d told her a little bit about telepathy a long time ago, and she knew that forced or unwelcome telepathic contact was of the highest offense, and was often punishable by law in most telepathic societies. To learn that someone had violated her Doctor in such a way made her absolutely furious.

She stood up and moved in front of him. She stepped between his knees and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. He, in turn, wound his arms around her waist, clutching at her desperately. His face was buried into her chest and his breathing had gone ragged.

“Shh,” she whispered, stroking his hair. “Shh, I’ve got you. I’m so sorry.”

It took a moment for the Doctor to compose himself again. He gave a bright, if slightly watery, chuckle as he said, “Sorry about that. This human body is much more emotional than I’m used to. Still figuring it all out, sifting through the hormones and adrenaline.”

Though she sensed he hadn’t told her the full story, Rose knew she wouldn’t get much more out of him at the moment.

So she grinned cheekily at him and said, “Well, hormones aren’t all that bad.”

She leaned down to capture his lips with hers.

They didn’t leave their hotel room that day.

That night, they lay together, their naked bodies twined together in a state of post-coital bliss. She snuggled herself closer to the sleeping Doctor, feeling more at ease than she’d felt in a long time, grinning when he made a noise of contentment and nuzzled his nose into her hair.

She was just about to drift to sleep when the Doctor let out a soft moan. It didn’t sound like any of the pleasurable moans he’d made that day, and Rose was instantly awake. She lifted herself slightly onto her elbow so she could see his face. His expression was pinched and pained, a light film of sweat dampening his brow.

“No,” he moaned softly. “Get out. Get out get out get out.”

The Doctor thrashed suddenly, flipping onto his back and fighting the sheets he was tangled in. When he couldn’t break himself free, he began thrashing more wildly, nearly clipping Rose with a rogue elbow.

“Please stop,” he begged, going absolutely still and tense.

The agony and terror in his voice broke her heart and churned her stomach. She caressed his cheek and ran her fingers through his hair, calling out for him, yet he remained resolutely asleep and trapped in his dream.

Rose finally shook him roughly. He jolted awake, and began wrestling with the sheets that were still tightly twined around his body. He made a noise of frustration and fear, his sleep-addled mind panicking.

“Shh, you’re all right, Doctor, just hold still,” she soothed, her hands deftly undoing him from his confines.

When the Doctor was free, he wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her neck. He trembled with sobs, more fiercely and openly than he had that afternoon. Rose wanted to cry for him, but instead she held him just as tightly and rocked them soothingly side to side, murmuring words of affirmation and love into his ear.

It took many long minutes before the tears stopped. When they did, Rose maneuvered them to lie back against the pillows again. His head was pillowed on her chest as he curled against her.

“What really happened on Midnight?” she asked gently, stroking her fingers through his sweat-dampened hair. “It’s what you dreamt of, isn’t it?”

The Doctor was silent for a beat, and then nodded slowly.

He inhaled deeply before launching into the entire tale, beginning to end. He spoke of the humans he’d befriended so quickly, yet who had turned on him even quicker. He told her of Jethro and Dee Dee, both so young and wise and kind, but scared and confused. He told her of the arrogance of the professor, and of Biff, who thought he was doing the right thing, and of the malice and desperation of Val. All of them worked together, their compounding fear nearly leading to his death.

He spoke of the ominous knocking before being thrown around like rag dolls around the interior cabin of their bus. He spoke of how eerily Sky had acted, just staring at them all with large, intelligent, soulless eyes.

“I just wanted to help,” he murmured, his voice full of regret and pain.

He spoke of everyone’s horror as Sky began repeating their words, until she finally caught up with them. He spoke of his abject terror when he realized Sky had begun speaking ahead of him, when he realized he’d been overrun.

“It was so cold in my head,” he whispered, shivering against the memories. “I hadn’t realized it was slowly creeping into my head until it was too late. I tried throwing up all of my mental shields, but they were rusty; I hadn’t needed them for a very long time. I couldn’t get it out of my head; I couldn’t communicate. And the passengers, they were all so scared and angry.”

He spoke of the passengers’ decision to throw him off the bus. He told her how it felt to have hands all over him, dragging him to his death, and being powerless to stop it, or to defend himself.

He told her of the Hostess, and of her bravery.

“She jumped off the bus with Sky,” he said. “As soon as they disappeared, I was free again. She saved us all, and that whole bloody planet. I can’t even imagine what might have happened if Sky and that creature had been able to make it back to civilization. But no one knew her name. She saved us all, and I never knew her name.”

He spoke of his wariness of the TARDIS when he’d finally gotten home; he hadn’t wanted her in his head at all, yet she was impossible to get away from. He’d thrown up all of his mental barriers against his time ship, but that had only resulted in a massive headache for him and a bit of queasiness from her. The TARDIS had sensed his discomfort and unease, and had thus reduced her presence in his mind to barely a whisper until he could finally bear to have her in his head again.

Rose soothed him as best she could through his recollection. She knew he had a guilt complex a mile wide, and she knew this must have been eating away at him for quite awhile. She cursed herself for these past couple of months; she’d been all too excited to be back with the Doctor and traveling again, that she’d put off all of the conversations that probably should have happened. They’d been apart for so many years, and a lot had happened in that time, to both of them. They weren’t the same people they were when they’d lost each other.

She made a vow with herself to slow down, and really focus on her relationship with this Doctor. She knew she’d been avoiding her own emotions, and she would bet everything she owned that he was avoiding his own, too.

No more.

“I saw you on that bus,” she finally admitted quietly, drawing random patterns and shapes across his shoulder blade. “Before everything that happened. I’d been trying to reach you for months, but you never seemed to see me."

He gaped up at her, his mouth working but no words coming out. It would have been comical if not for the burning agony behind his eyes.

She shrugged and said, “Doesn’t matter now. Everything turned out the way it was supposed to.”

The Doctor nuzzled into her hair and murmured, “I’d wished I’d seen you; I missed you so much.”

“Me too,” she murmured, her eyes growing heavy. “But we’re here now. That’s good enough for me. More than good enough.”

The Doctor hummed in agreement. He remained curled around Rose, his head on her breast and his arm slung across her hips. Rose sighed happily and rested her cheek against his hair, content to stay there for the rest of the night. She felt impossibly full of happiness and love for the man draped across her body, and she knew this was how it was meant to be: the Doctor and Rose Tyler, together forever.


End file.
